Unmistakable

By Nicola Jones

FORGET passports and driving licences. Soon the only proof of identity you’ll
need is your eyes. A study published this week comfirms that iris scans are
faster and more accurate than any other computerised means of identifying
people, such as fingerprint, face or voice recognition.

Most iris recognition systems are based on software created by John Daugman
of Cambridge University. An image of an iris, with all the tiny pits, ridges and
strings of tissue that make it unique, is turned into a series of
three-dimensional contour maps. Then this information is compressed into a code
of …

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